I left my catnip tea in the kitchen to steep. I forgot about it, so I went back for it 15 minutes later instead of five. As I was walking to the kitchen I saw Madeleine leaving. The water level of my tea had dropped a half inch.

We read something triggering and Cyndi came out and started hitting the body with a spetula. We've got a row of welts on our arm. I, Gloria, was able to take control and wake up Lake to sit with us. I made her a grilled cheese for her trouble. We're doing much better now, so she went back to sleep.

I was flipping through my orange journal and ran across a happy memory. It was written the afternoon after Gerette and I went skinny dipping.

August 6th, 2000 1:00pm The ritual went extremely well. Clover didn't go, but that was okay. We were able to cleanse Gerette's tainted items and break the hex. After the ritual, Gerette and I went skinny dipping. It was fun. I've never done that before. I made Gerette turn around while I was out of the water so she wouldn't see me. Gerette left the water first, after which I swam to the middle of the pond. It was so nice sitting in the middle of the quiet water with a slight mist obscuring the shore, staring up at the pinhole stars while the occasional meteor would streak by. It was just me and the water and the sky. No one else, nothing else. Just me alone in the universe.

I want to go skinny dipping there again. Unfortunately, Lake won't drive to the pond, me and Gerette aren't getting along anymore, and I don't know anyone else who both has a car and is interested.

Lesson learned: don't blindly take spellcheck suggestions. In an entry last night, properly titled "Spatula Attack", I had misspelled spatula, then took the spellcheck suggestion: specula!. Using specula instead of spatula made the entry read quite differently. I corrected the entry, using spatula this time. And no, we do not have specula randomly lying about the house.

Just had a visit from Mrs. Richardson, our landlady. We signed the new lease and she gave us the interest from our deposit (a much needed $25). Her husband just recently died. She's had a lot of deaths in her family lately. I gave her a wish pod for good luck. She's a little senile. She said we were her best tenants, and that she tells everyone how long we've been living in her buildings - "over ten years now". Ten years ago we were in high school in Missouri. I'm not going to correct her, if she wants to believe that then let her. We hugged when she left. She's a wonderful person, but she doesn't keep up her buildings very well.