Not much to report

I'm looking out my back window at a garbage truck, thinking what I think whenever I see a garbage truck or fire truck or large vehicle of any description without Barak around: "Oh, Barak would LOVE that!" Yesterday on the way home from "camp" we passed a cherrypicker-cum-forklift that was lifting bags of cement onto the top of a building under construction. We stopped to watch, and the guy directing the cherrypicker, thinking we wanted to get by, waved us past. "No, we're just looking," I called over the din. "He loves trucks." "Don't they all!" he yelled back genially. I guess mine was not the first two-year-old to gape at his truck.

MHH has been in New York since Sunday, coming back tomorrow. We could have gone, but I didn't think it would be any easier than staying home by ourselves, and although we miss him I'm glad we didn't go. Instead we had a couple of friends come here to visit, and that's been a lot more fun. Barak, however, has had a cold and an ear infection, and with Abba's mysterious absence on top of that has not exactly been sweet and cheerful this week. And Iyyar has still been having a lot of tummyaches, so it's been, shall we say, a high-volume household for the last few days. And I'm a little on the sleep-deprived side, to put it mildly. But as I keep reminding myself, I had a quiet house once and I'll have one again someday, and I should enjoy the noise while I have it.

The volume has also been added to in a most satisfactory way by the arrival of my lovely new mixer. It turned up at 2 pm on a Friday and yes, I had a five-pound bag of flour dumped in it within the hour, and warm challah ready by candlelighting. (I read the manual online before it arrived so as to be able to get right down to business. What, me obsessive?) I've already done three enormous batches of dough, one white and two whole-wheat, and only stopped when I ran out of both flour and yeast. More yeast came in the mail today, and my friends and I walked the two miles to the grocery store that sells the flour I like to get more of that, so I'm tempted to fire the mixer up again during naptime this afternoon. But there are six loaves in the freezer, and I should probably do some of the other high-priority household tasks (you know, like changing the sheets Barak pooped all over last night) first. Probably.