1) Usual beginning-of-the-month stuff.
2) Need to file estimated taxes (bah)
3) Need to write that damn cover letter for NPR and get it off my desk.
4) Need to figure out grad school stuff.
5) Entirely too much socialization.
and 6) My own procrastination, too!

1) Figuring out what to do about my job.
2) Figuring out what to do about my life.
3) Figuring out if there's anything else left to do.

1) The garden (see procrastination). Actually I've pretty much got all the veg in now, though I've got one more bed to dig and populate. It's the weeding of the long-neglected flower beds that's got me down. They've been ignored for over a year, so it's a daunting task.
2) Trying to figure out how to hang a shower curtain rail on my own. I think I've got a plan that'll work, now that I've figured out how to jerry-rig my way around its idiotic design. We'll find out today. 'Course I could wait until my friend comes to visit on Thursday, but I want a shower, dammit, and the thing's been sitting here for a week!
3) Taxes. Mine, my grandmother's...it's a nightmare. (see procrastination)
4) Making food for my uncle's wedding. The blushing bride has nicely told me to get on it already, so I'd better...um...get on it.
5) Not work. *weeps, shakes fist at the rainy sky*

1. Children's sugar delivery systems.
2. Usurers
3. Tallow

1) Trying to do three weeks' worth of work in four days, so my boss (returning on Monday from a month away) will not immediately figure out what a total SLACK-ASS I have been.

2) Also, trying to prepare my "I'm leaving" speech for my boss. (Which may make my slackerhood a moot issue.)

3) Purging all my material possessions, preparatory to moving across the country.

4) As part of 3), trying to resolve unbelievable paperwork hassles so I can get a replacement title for the dead car that's been sitting in my garage for the past three years so I can give it away to charity.

5) Researching moving company scams and freaking out.

6) Writing cover letters to apply for jobs, a task which I hate with a FIERY PASSION.

1) Learning to use Access while preparing a massive database tool that will revolutionize the way very few people do very little.

2) Writing two plays and a musical.

3) Daydreaming about a walk in the park.

4) Haircut, dammit! Haircut!

5) Select query, Union query, MakeTable query, Union of Union tables, MakeTable of Union of Union tables: 230,000 records of DOGSHIT!

6) I want my mommy.

1. Researching tour outline on widows and widowhood
2. Pulling together a team of consultants for Discovery Center planning
3. Getting interns sorted and lined up with housing and orientation
4. Helping plan Slow Food picnic
5. Planning dept. meeting on visitor motivation
6. Planning training for Discovery Center
7. Workout schedule
8. Harvesting lettuce and spinach before it gets hot, and finding some damn basil somewhere at this late date to transplant
9. Getting around to that book review that's still hanging over my head

1) Being two weeks behind on a summer-long project here at work.

2) Wrestling with the DMV over trying to get a tag for my car. (In a month they've gone from, "We haven't processed the title yet" to "We don't have that title, do we?" to being unsure the car even exists.)

(I only exaggerate slightly.)

1. Work, and lots of it.
2. CD Release and summer as well as fall "tour" planning.
3. Reviving a stalled issue #2 of my comic.
4. The Top Secret project.

I'm unbusy.

(Please don't pelt me with rocks, busy people.)

I'm laid up with a back injury, and I have nothing to do am forbidden from attending to any of my urgent chores. It's making me crazy.

But Miko, I'm intrigued: if you're able to discuss it, what's this widow/widowhood tour about?

Oh, BP, my deepest sympathies on your DMV hassles; with my previous dead car, I couldn't get a replacement title because I couldn't get a signoff from Chrysler Credit on a lien waiver because they had no record of me, the car, or the loan ever existing.

1. Preparing for next quarter
2. Worrying about next quarter
3. Dreaming about next quarter
4. Eating skittles

1. Making signs.
2. Making more signs.
3. Making boring signs and fun signs and funky signs and, well, signs.
4. Dreaming about signs and logos.
5. Won't get a weekend this week. Bah.

Elsa: I work at a history museum - we needed to put a walking tour together and just happened to have two houses, depicted in time periods about 15 years apart, which both had a widow as head of household. So we're using the tour to look at the legal status of women in the Early Republic. Basically, if you were married, you were "femme covert," or legally "covered" by your husband's identity. Your own legal identity ceased to exist upon marriage. You couldn't buy or sell things, make contracts, sue or be sued, and your husband could give away, sell, or change property you brought into the marriage without needing your permission. That didn't start to change until about the 1840s/50s. If your husband died and you didn't remarry, you would generally inherit 1/3 of the income from his assets until you died. If you had children, his inheritance would then pass to them -- meaning you couldn't make a will to pass that property on to people of your choosing. If you didn't have children though, you could be designated "femme sole," which meant you had your own legal identity and all the rights of a man (with the exception of voting or holding licenses that were available only to men).

Women who were widows had more individual, financial, and legal freedom than married women. But only if there were no living children could they dispose of their own property. This is all significant because widowhood was soooo common before the 20th century. Women generally married men ten to fifteen years their senior, and men had shorter lifespans anyway. Remarrying wasn't all that common unless a woman had young children to provide for, because widowhood had some advantages over married life.

In the two houses on our tour, we had one woman with children and one without. It's a very cool comparison. The one with children managed her husband's shipping business and rentals, and her sons ended up inheriting it. The other woman had no kids, but she brought over nine neices and nephews from England and helped them immigrate. She set them up in businesses or marriages and paid for their apprenticeships and her grandneices' and nephews' educations, and left a lot of money to her church and to the Temperance cause.

Interesting stuff! But looots of work to research!

That is *fascinating*, Miko. I remember reading some similar stuff about widowhood before, a long time ago, and being equally as interested. I'd love to go on the tour!

Excellent -- that's exactly what I was hoping it would be! Thanks for such a thorough explanation, too, when you are, as stated, so very busy!

I'll keep an eye out for this project when it's ready for the public, as it's just my cup of tea and well worth a day trip down to [town redacted].

(psst: there's a question over on the green about living in [town redacted] with only one answer so far, and I bet you could be a big help. I started to answer, then realized I'd been away too many years to be helpful.)

oh neat, thanks!