Yesterday morning we went to the farmers’ market and got some greens and bamboo shoots and hothouse cucumbers and tomatoes and breads. We ran into people from the university and the church and the Chamber Singers, so it was a rather lengthy shopping trip, and we had to hurry from there to our first party of the day.

It was at Partygirl’s, so there was champagne and delicious brunch food, and we saw old friends and met some new people, and left there just in time to get #2 son to his gymnastics class. There #2 daughter and I spent an hour admiring #2 son and catching up on each other’s lives, and then we all zipped over to the grocery to get things for my husband’s birthday cake.

Following the birthday celebration, we went and bought straw hats for the Derby party, and got back just in time to take the price tags off before Janalisa showed up to fetch us for the party.

The party was quite fun. Our hostess had put the names of the horses in a bowl, and each of us put in a dollar and picked a name. The one who picked the name of the winner got the dollars. Our hostess had also laid out a lovely spread of food, and I was able to take a plateful of fruit and vegetables (okay, there was a phyllo cup involved at one point, but it was mostly fruit and vegetables). And she had mint juleps. I assume they were juleps. She had a blender going out on the screen porch, and was pouring out frosty glasses and pouring in more and more Old Crow, and the bourbon fumes reached your nostrils long before the cup reached your lips. I drank about a quarter of an inch of mine.

So there we were, surrounded by ladies in hats calling out “Hey!” (casual local version of “Hello”) as more and more ladies in hats arrived, and greeting #2 daughter with things like “Come over here and give me a hug, you precious thing!” and having the standard girl party conversations. The ages ranged from 20 to 80, a thing which I always feel improves a party.

When the race began, we distributed ourselves among the rooms with televisions. In our room, we determined that we would shout. While we watched the horses coming around, we debated what might be good things to shout. “Come on, Hard Spun!” sounds fine, but “Come on, I’maWildandCrazyGuy!” is not so good, so we wanted some alternatives. We came up with a few, and one of the group recommended the line from My Fair Lady: “Move your bloomin’ arse!” So when the actual race part began, we were ready.

Our room was lucky. We had the women who had picked the two frontrunners, Cowtown Cat and Hard Spun, so once the rest of our horses were off the screen, we all rooted for the two of them, mostly just alternating “Come on, Hard Spun” and “Come on Cowtown Cat” for fairness’s sake. So when another horse came up on the outside in the final seconds, we were all taken aback. We thought is was Sedgefield, and had already agreed that “Come on Sedgefield” would sound silly. Then we saw that it was not number 1 but number 7 — and the person who had pulled his name was in our room, too. You can imagine that we had plenty of excitement there.

We then returned to the random chatting business of the party, and got home in time for #2 daughter to get ready for her date with Arkenboy. He is seriously overworked right now (and I know seriously overworked when I see it) and had a study group later, so #2 daughter rejoined us in time to watch a movie — Keeping Mum, which was very good. We went to bed early and got up extremely early to send her off to her church (she is the music minister) in another state. She left me a lovely dress she made, so that I can do the hand-finishing. I’ll show you a picture later. I have also completed a skein of the Plymouth Stone cotton, and I’ll show you a picture of that later, too. I left my camera at the store on Friday.

What I should do today is clean house and weed the garden. It is possible that what I will actually do is read and knit.