Bucolic pleasures, bad carma, and bedtime blues

Let's start with the glorious, shall we? The sunsets here are different, and spectacular, nearly every single tonight. Yesterday, just to make the two natural disaster-acclimated Californians feel right at home, we had a tornado warning for much of our region. Yet by the time the sun was preparing to set, the clouds were dissipating across the sky, there was a fiery ball descending toward the horizon, and the juxtaposition of blue against green was staggering. (In the interest of full disclosure, this picture, which does no justice to the sunset it depicts, is from a couple of nights ago.)

Then, there are the other wonders of nature, namely the growing ones. I cannot call anything on our property a "garden", but we do have ragged old apple trees, explosive forsythia, and, I discovered yesterday, one lovely lilac. The Babe and I set out on a flower-gathering expedition with the dogs , and returned with much astonishing loveliness. The whole is now fragranced, which is helping with a mood turned dark, thanks to a not-so-kindly encounter the other day with the Massachusetts State Police. My infraction was a driving one, but I'm not going to write too much more than that about it until after I complete my field trip this afternoon to the Great Barrington courthouse, where I must appear, to find out--something, perhaps the size of the book to be thrown at the person who dares to drive in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts carrying a California license, a semi-valid temporary registration, and claiming to live in New York. Let's just say I experienced harassment and bullying from a young officer the likes of which I've personally never seen. Welcome to the Berkshires.

Meanwhile, her loveliness (the Babe) has insisted upon moving into a Big Girl Bed. She begged, she pleaded, she picked it out, she chose the other baby upon whom she would bestow her now-obsolete crib. Until I took the crib apart and put it in the basement. Now she cries for it, and will only go to bed if she's already fallen asleep in my arms or, even better, the car. Sigh.