A busy sort of lovely day.

After a pretty good night's sleep...re-vacuumed the living room in response to a strange proliferation of CHEERIOS hither and thither... Then got the kitchen counters cleaned, the dishwasher loaded, and headed off to the dentist for the second instalment of a three-stage cleaning.  My dentist has been my dentist for just under 40 years.  He is sidling into retirement...has taken on a new young partner and a bevy of new hygienists.  The receptionist remains the same, with a wonderful whooping laugh like a troop of cavalry crossing a tin bridge...
I dislike the tooth-cleaning routine but I have techniques for coping.  Two Tylenol (about 1/2 an hour before my appointment) seem to help.  And I tell the hygienist how gentle she has been, and how much I appreciate it.
Then home, a little, a very little, lunch (tooth-cleaning always makes me think, maybe intravenous is the way I want to go from here on), and then LAWN MOWING.  Brief frustration at trying to find the keys to the shed (the shed which contains the mower), but we managed that, and I was happy to use my NEW and very flexible 100-foot extension cord (electric mower)...It took me three or four sessions, with iced tea in between, but the front yard looks, if not good, at least INTENTIONAL.  And not so much as if "some kind o' widder-woman" lives here (my grandmother's label for a certain state of dilapidation and neglect).
And then got myself cleaned up and away to a wonderful dinner and glorious spiraling conversation with one-two-three charming gentlemen--life and art and dance and theatre and The Church and The Faith and national identity and lovely never-exhausted topics like that.
I have put the garbage out.  I am going to bed with some good reading.  Tomorrow is also a day.