ok, so it is friday, and that means that i won't get home til at least 10 tonight- we have 47 reservations for people wanting our dinner/playhouse combo, which tonight is murder at the vicarage. i am fixing cornish game hens in an apricot glaze, my version of beef wellington, and baked salmon with a cucumber sauce. yummmmm. i need to think up a vegetarian dish, of course........

i started undaunted courage- a book about merriweather lewis and the expedition. i am also reading as i lay dying, but the lewis book was on the front table when i was in the mood to pick up a book. lewis really loved his mother, according to the frist 2 chapters about his early life. there is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to her somewhere along the upper missouri river pledging his undying support for her in her old age. now that is my kind of boy.........this woman was some sort of herbalist, and lived well into her 80's helping to heal the sick in her neighberhood. she did marry the man her husband suggested to her on his death bed- now that is a concept that i found a bit disturbing. but that was a different time- when women alone had a rough go of it when it came to protection, financial management, etc. so the widow lewis married her 1st husband's hand chosen successor within 6 months of his death- and she outlived that guy, too- but without another death bed pick she remained an unmarried widow the rest of her days.......the book is just getting to the part where lewis meets jefferson.........