Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit

It's the first of March, and my father used to say that the first words you speak on March 1 should be "rabbit rabbit rabbit" to bring good luck.  Well, I thought of that this morning while lying in bed, but then I realized that my first words had been "No, not yet," spoken to the dogs to get them to stop thinking that 3:00 a.m. is a good time to get up.  So rats, I missed it.  One year my father typed the word rabbit a zillion times on a piece of paper & left it next to my bed so I'd see it when I first woke up.  He did some cute things for his little girls.  Someone else told me that you should say "rabbit, etc." on the first of EVERY month.  That's a bit much.

I've got a busy weekend ahead of me.  Company coming tomorrow, early afternoon.  Michael & Stephanie, who own a camp near my house, are coming from Boston to see their camp in the winter.  They're staying with me.  Yikes.  I spent last weekend cleaning the house (more or less), getting things in presentable shape.  Also hosted book group Sunday eve, another good reason to get the house in shape.  I still have some work to do upstairs but I've managed to keep the downstairs in pretty good shape.  A little tidying up is needed.  The kitchen is a mess, beyond anything I can fix.  I seldom look at my house through someone else's eyes, but when I do it's a rude awakening.  My fridge is dirty inside and out.  My stove is dirty and won't come clean.  My pantry is a mess--you can't really walk into it right now, there's too much stuff on the floor.  The biggest problem I have is TOO MUCH STUFF.  I have furniture upstairs that I'd like to use but it's full of crap.  I need to clean out the bureaus (there are 3, full of old clothes and mouse nests).  I need to clear the floors of the master bedroom and the mud room.  These are projects I hope to attack in May, when I take my big 5-day break and stay home.  Let's see how it goes.

The weather finally broke--no more sub-zeros for a while.  It's been in the 30's, which feels spring-like and balmy.  Snowed this week, and because it was so warm the snow was heavy (I'd call it heavy & wet, but isn't snow always wet?).  We got about 6" in Hawkeye, and I think we're supposed to get about 6 more during the weekend.  It doesn't bother me as much as it does some years--I guess I used up my tolerance for the cold before my tolerance for snow.

Tomorrow night is dinner at Annie Holt's--Michael, Stephanie, Bill and I will go there.  She likes to cook and have company for dinner, so we're all going.  Rush couldn't come this weekend so it's just Annie.

Our book group read Billy Lynn's long halftime walk last month and no one really liked it.  We must be poor judges of literature, though, because it just won the National Book Critics Award for fiction.  Harumph.

Dogs are doing well.  Treasure brought home another deer leg (how many legs does this deer have?) but I took it to the dump.  Poor T., she looked very disappointed.  If dogs can look disappointed.
She & Tess are having a good time these days, lots of running around & chasing each other.  Tess is thrilled to have a dog to play with--Chances used to play with her but got too old to be interested in it.  They used to play Mean Fighting Dogs a lot, lots of snarling and jumping on each other.  I loved it when they did that but Ken hated it so I stopped taking them to his house.  In hindsight I can't believe I took them in the first place, but that was then.  They don't get out much anymore--trips to the dump and to RI, that's about it.