When was the last time you sat next to a bank of sun-baked juniper, playing Celtic harp, bathed in golden, pink rays of the setting sun dancing on rippled, dappled lakewaters, blessed by a heron who decided to commute home right overhead..at that very moment? And your fingers remembered the tune you've been practicing for a few weeks now and you forgot the music in the room and learned that you didn't really need or want it anyway?

And here's another sweet and funny thing to add to this life-painting...there is something about Welsh Tune #1 and 2 on the harp that attracts muskrats! I am not kidding you! This has happened before. It happened again tonight here at the lake. As I was playing, there was a "Bloop!" in the water very closeto the lake's edge where I was playing and this wee head there..lingers, lingers..then "Bloop!"..gone. When I was on sabbatical and finding my way up the Cassiar to Chicken, Alaska, we camped alongside a lake. No human residents on the lake anywhere except us and another camper or two. That twilight time, I was playing harp--same tunes, same harp, near lake..and this time there were two "Bloops" and the linger, linger, linger of two wee heads, and then "Bloop!"..disappearing heads. Except that time, their wee heads were compelled to Bloop and Float, back and forth in front of me and the harp at the lake's edge until I changed songs. Toward the end, they didn't bother to Bloop. They just swam back and forth in front of the harp and me. I bet I could get some stimulus grant money to study the effect of poorly, but happily played beginner Celtic harp tunes on lake-resident muskratsof the Pacific Northwest...

The stories this harp and I could tell you....guess we just did. We have shared some amazing times, places, and magic. This harp brings me closer to Heaven than anything else just about in my life.

Day 2 of Special Ed Boot Camp. I have to do my homework yet. I decided to take a long nap and a break this afternoon. I will be up most of the night. The assignments are labor-intensive for a neophyte. This is pretty much all new news to me. I am being given the information and tools to be a better Erin and a better teacher...and adoptive parent. I have learned how to negotiate the processes of special education services, the difference between accommodations and services, the laws about all of it, goal and objective writing, collaboration....and this is only Day 2! They are feeding us well. We work hard all day. And then I get to enjoy the lake...and Lifetime television. I hid the remote from myself earlier today. Addictions can be hard to deal with and I am addicted to t.v. That's why I don't have one that works at my house. Youtube is bad enough. You can watch episodes of the Cosby show. And Colleen. Must do homework. And enjoy the sun going down. I love wireless internet and a room with a view.