By the way, in case anybody cares, you can now reach this page at http://abeyance.tripod.com/index.html as well as the longer version. Sometimes the links within the journal will go back and forth between the two URL versions. Just so you know.

I spent the weekend in Smallville at my aunt and uncle's house. Actually, I went to my parents' on Friday night, and my mother and I went to see "Mumford," which I found exceedingly cute. Then we got up Saturday morning and drove to Smallville, parked our stuff at my aunt and uncle's, and then had said uncle drive us down to the fall foliage festival, since parking was insane.

The festival is basically a craft fair, with music and food and face painting thrown in for good measure. Dozens of merchants are set up in booths with their stuff, some kitschy, some good, some insanely underpriced, some insanely overpriced.

I bought a beeswax air freshener. It releases the fragrance when it gets warmed up, but it won't melt until 140 degrees, so it's okay to put it in the window. It's a sun and moon, the motif of my bathroom, and who can't use a little air freshening in the bathroom from time to time?

We found my other aunt and uncle, my cousin, and my grandfather sitting on hay bales watching a local bluegrass band. Through a cruel twist of fate, one of my cousin's former bus drivers loved bluegrass music, and now that's all he will listen to.

My cousin was born prematurely and has severe developmental problems, behavioral as well as physical. He's very prone to tantrums, and exhibits a lot of obssessive behavior. For example, he will e-mail me 10 times in one hour, and write the same exact thing over and over again, which will mostly be about cars and how often I will come to visit him and drive his mom's white Honda to shopping malls and large stores. He also communicates through sign language, which is more a product of the fact that his jaw didn't develop fully than because he can't hear, although he is legally deaf.

So my mother and I walked over to them, and as soon as he saw me, the first thing he said (signed) was "Liz drive my mom's white Honda, yep?" "Yes, I'll drive your mom's Honda." "Real, real." "For real." "No teasing." "No, I'm not teasing you."

Then he got all happy and excited and hugged the life out of me. He just had to get the part out about how I'm going to drive the Honda, then he was okay.

[Just for clarity, I'm going to spell out my family tree for a second. My mother has two sisters, Julie and Anne. Julie's son is the above-described cousin, Christopher. Anne's daughter is the below-described bride-to-be, Amy. She's 25. Her fiance is Craig. Her little sister, my other cousin, is Beth, who is 20.]

The engagement party was lovely. I bought Amy a copy of "Weddings for Dummies," which was the only present that didn't make her cry. Aunt Julie gave her a copy of poems by Helen Steiner Rice that my grandfather had given my grandmother a long time ago. Amy's getting married next August, one day before my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, so my mother gave her a porcelain candy dish that someone had given her as an engagement present 40 years ago.

The food was good, but the drink was even better. Aunt Anne made this slush drink: a container of orange juice concentrate, a container of lemonade concentrate, water, sugar, and bourbon, all frozen together. Then you scoop it out into a highball and pour some ginger ale on it. Positively delicious, and we ran out way too soon.

After everyone else left, my two uncles went to bed (not with each other, but you understood that), my mom and Julie and Anne blabbed in the living room (everyone was extra-loquacious due to the fabulousness of the slush), and Amy, Craig, Beth and I rented "Primal Fear," which Craig and I had seen before but my cousins hadn't.

All in all, a lovely day. My mother's side of the family is crazy in a good and happy way. That's probably why I love angsty-family movies so much, because I have never had to experience it myself.

And I do love Smallville. Reminds me a lot of Mumford, as a matter of fact. They could have shot that movie there.

We listened to the new Sting album all the way up and back. I like it, on the whole. There are a few songs I love, and only a couple of songs I don't really care for. Overall I'm pleased. It's better than "Mercury Falling," which I didn't like at all except for "I Was Brought to my Senses." This album is a lot happier. And I admire the fact that he's gotten to a point where he doesn't really care whether anything's going to be played on top-40 radio, because no song jumps out at me as a single.

I'd really be stunned if he ever did anything that I loved more than "Nothing Like the Sun." That was an album that changed my life. Not that it give me any great epiphanies or anything, but it's a touchstone for my adolescence, when my views of the world were changing.

Anyway, I'll give "Brand New Day" a thumbs up, and say that I wouldn't be at all surprised if his next album is all country. He seems to enjoy a little twang here and there.

And I'm pleased to announce that due to the recent discovery that I'm fat (like you expected me to be anything but snarky about this), I'm now going to walk 1.2 miles each morning with Susannah. She lives down the street about three blocks, and once measured off how far it was from her house to the traffic light up the street from me, so we're going to walk the loop each morning at 6:15. In the past, the only time I've ever been good about exercise is when I had someone to do it with, so the fact that she's expecting me to show up each morning is the only thing that will make me actually do it.

1.2 miles isn't a lot, I know, but it's 1.2 miles farther than I'm walking now. Baby steps, people, it's all about baby steps.