Move along. Nothing to see here.

Yesterday was my birthday. It wasn't one of those star-studded events, but honestly, when one is later in life, one does well to remember the birthdays, much less acknowledge them :) Here's what happened:
1. I didn't cook. Yay!
2. Julia didn't eat much either, which I will have to amend today. Anybody else have a non-eater? Sigh.
3. I went shopping. And, as Julia would say, "for unmentionables." Shopping alone. I'm of an age where I don't take kids along because they're babies-in-tow, but because kids want to go shopping too. So "alone" is still a treat.
4. We went to Bible study, which is always lovely. But we were in a cat-home. I love cats, but they don't love me, and I've never before had such a strong allergic reaction. Benadryl and 2 Tylenols later, I got to sleep.

So, happy birthday to me :) !!! Today, I may bake a cake. Maybe. I nabbed a Martha Steward Living magazine from my mom's house last week, and it had a gorgeous chocolate cake recipe in it. Dark chocolate. From scratch (of course, this is Martha, after all). With nice, thick layers of icing in between. Okay, if I don't make it, I'll try to to take a picture of the magazine page, and put it here for you to drool over too.

Okay, that's not the one in the magazine, but you get the idea, right?

Um, what else? Oh! I did laundry! Which isn't news-worthy, except I used the new laundry soap I made, remember? Well, I'm here to tell you, it works GREAT! I did remove as much of the grated Fels-Naptha as I could, and put it through the food processor first. It became more powdery. Next time, I'll do that first. Honestly, it's hard for me to put only one tablespoon in a washer load. It just doesn't feel like enough, after dumping a cup of store detergent in there for decades, you know? So I probably used a bit more, but less that two tbsp. The clothes are clean, fresh-smelling, but they lack the perfumed smell of normal soap, which is good. I know that lots of the chemicals they put in commercial soaps are simply to achieve a particular scent, which my brain eventually associates with "clean." But it's not clean; it's just smelly. The stains came out. I treated at least 3 stains right before washing, and they all came out.

And my dear sister-in-law Faith sent me a new blog for reading this morning: Mommy Coddle. I like her writing. If you have a few minutes, go check out a few posts. I liked the one about chasing the fox out of the yard in the middle of the night :)

Today? I'm finishing laundry. And clipping azalea bushes. And maybe baking a cake. And visiting two dear friends this afternoon. And cooking a chicken for supper. Or maybe going out for Mexican with Adam, to celebrate my day o' birth. And then maybe snuggling down on the couch tonight for an episode of "Numbers" on Netflix with him.

What's on your agenda?