I was washing dishes this morning at 9:40, and had been doing it for some time. I was getting really hungry. My goal had been to finish all of yesterday's left-over dishes before I washed my face or ate breakfast, but hunger was driving me to re-consider. At 9:41, I set down the sponge, turned to the door to head upstairs--and the radio voice on BBC3 said,

"If you've been waiting all your life to hear My Fair Lady's 'Wouldn't it be Loverly' sung in Swedish, today is your lucky day, because here it is!"

Well. How could I resist? I picked the sponge back up and stayed in the kitchen long enough to listen to "Wouldn't it be Loverly," sung in Swedish in a 1950s Big Band jazz recording.

And I have to say, it was memorable.

So if anyone else has been waiting their whole life for this, go check out the BBC3 website and you might be able to listen to it there (or at least find out the recording details).

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For a pair of grey, rainy days filled with stressful money worries, yesterday and today have been filled with surprisingly perfect moments.

Yesterday evening at about 5:00, when I took Nika out in the near-pitch-black for her much-delayed last walk, I was fuming over the above-mentioned worries, and furious at myself for putting off her walk until it was dark, so that we couldn't go down into the woods. I set off with her down the road to the center of the village--and a fox ran straight across our path. It was sleek and small and so light-colored that it actually seemed to glow in the light of the streetlamp. It was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in so long, and it just took my breath away. I have never in my life seen a fox outside of a zoo or a television documentary. It was amazing. And it was about thirty feet from my own house! Later that night, as Patrick and I were standing in the bathroom brushing our teeth, I looked out the window and saw another fox sauntering down our sidewalk, big plumy tail held high. As we watched, it turned casually into the bushes by the side of the road and disappeared. It felt like magic.