Awesome, awesome weekend.
leorathesane and I took Friday off from work. Hooray! We ran around doing a lot of house- and yard-cleaning and ran a lot of errands in anticipation of a wee small May Day bonfire that evening. But first, we nipped over to Mother Earth Gardens for a big pot, some soil, and a bunch of plants. We are now the proud tenders of a lovely little herb container garden consisting of sweet basil, purple basil, lemon thyme, Greek oregano, tricolor sage, and rosemary. Delightful! The wee small fire was excellent: good friends, a warm fire, a dash of woo-woo, and orange cupcakes.
Saturday morning, it was off to the first day of the Midtown Farmers' Market, which we've been missing terribly. We bought no produce, but we did pick up a lovely something from faedaughter. A quick jaunt to the co-op to pick up a few things (and become members! Yay!) was followed by what I think can be termed my first "real" bike ride ever (just 3 blocks each way, and my legs almost gave out at the end, and then I ran into a car, but hey - I was riding! On the road!).
In the evening we traipsed to ytinas's place, and she and her Mister and I and my Ma'am hopped the train to First Ave to hear ye olde Cult of Clouds (with Ice Palace and Map and Atlases. Leora and I preferred Ice Palace; ytinas and the Nemesis favored Maps and Atlases. We all loved Cloud Cult, even though some of their lyrics (combined with the crush of people squooshing into us - and since we were standing against a metal barrier, there wasn't anyplace we could go) had me bursting into tears. As they themselves say, "No one said it would be easy."
Sunday was Living Green Expo day! I first went with Marjorie back in either '02 or '03, and Leora and I have been going together since '04. I am in awe of how it has grown over the years. It now takes up both floors of the Grandstand and most of the surrounding outside area. And yet, paradoxically, it takes us less time to go through it each year, because there's a lot of stuff we don't need or can’t use (like architects and baby-clothes purveyors. This is not to say that we don't pick up or buy stuff, as evidenced by Leora's gorgeous new bamboo dress and my stack of cards from organizations for whom I might do volunteering and/or writing). We were there by 11, and by 2:30 we were whizzing home with our rain barrel securely ensconced in the back seat.
We pulled up in front of our house just in time for Leora to say, "Eli, there's a wild turkey walking through our yard." And she was not hallucinating. A wild turkey was, indeed, hot-footing it up our block!
Later in the afternoon, we took the various publications, catalogues, &c we'd picked up at the Expo and lazed around the yard looking at them and soaking up glorious sun-rays. Then I almost fell asleep while on the phone with my mother. So I went to bed.
And that's how I won the Congressional Medal of Honor spent my long May Day weekend.