…Jodi has been printing and printing and printing. The Haywire studio will be open to the public for the first time during the River Arts Studio Tour, which takes place over two weekends (Oct 25-26 and Nov 1-2). If you’re curious to see what we’ve been up to, please do stop by.

What else? I made a delicious smoothie.

And Alden had hat day at school.

And August had “Learn how to be smooth with the ladies” day at school.

Apparently, he didn’t fare so well on his maiden voyage. I’ve taught him all my moves. But wasn’t nearly enough.

Also, I have been binding hundreds of books. The next Bobbledy mailing goes out this week. If you have let your kid’s club membership expire, now’s the time to renew.

On Friday, I stopped at the world’s most beautiful and well-provisioned rest stop, the estimable Delaware House.

Even the stonework on the front patio is lovely.

Yesterday morning, I paused to notice how beautiful is the building in which I get to spend my days.

Later that afternoon, I took my children to a birthday party at a vertically impressive indoor playground.

My favorite part were the weirdo signs on the bathrooms.

Not only do you have to be a girl to go through this door, but you have to be wearing a clown dress with a huge collar.

And only use this one if you are a portly boy in a ski jacket.

The playground was in Smyrna, which is not far from Christiana. And so we were technically within the gravitational pull of Costco.

We did not fight it.

This morning, Alden found August in the laundry basket and used the opportunity to read him a story.

Contrary to how it looks in the photo, the book was not on fire.

Today (Sunday), we went to visit our friends Amy and Glenn. We paid a visit to Amy’s pottery studio, which is full of lovely, curated spaces. Like this hanging cabinet of small wonders.

And this shelf of glazes and other chemicals.

Glenn is a chef. An excellent chef. He served food that made me emotional. Our friend Ben was also there. The brunch invitation had included a suggestion that pajamas were acceptable fare. Apparently, Ben does not take suggestions like these lightly.

We gave Amy and Glenn a few of our sockeye fillets earlier this week, and in the mean time, Glenn has been curing them. Using a special knife made specifically for cutting thin slices of cured fish, he cut thin slices of cured fish.

Even more miraculously, a few minutes later, he let me give it a try. Robbi does everything she can to keep me away from knives.

If you don’t know, lox is among my favorite things in the world, along with seaweed salad and my children.

Glenn grilled flatbread on his Weber. He sliced red and green tomatoes from his garden. He pickled some onions. The assembled offerings resulted in the single most delicious lox-based sandwich thing I have ever experienced.

I ate it and then I ate it again. And then I ate it again. I finished all the lox and had to go back and cut more.

While I was embarrassing myself, Robbi demonstrated the proper way to be smooth with the ladies.

August might have taken a few notes, but he was too busy at the sandbox.

It was an excellent stretch of days, thanks to friends and fish and and the combination thereof.