Listening to: A Tom Chapin tape in the car, which the twins listen to endlessly. My favorite song on the tape is "This Pretty Planet."

This pretty planet,
Spinning through space,
You're a garden, you're a harbor,
You're a holy place.
Golden sun going down,
Gentle blue giant, spin us around,
All through the night,
Safe till the morning light.

Inexpensive Pleasures and Found Treasures

Next Saturday, Tab's cousin's daughter, Noelle, is getting married. Tab will be photographing the wedding. Stephanie, who will also be attending Noelle's wedding, has been on a fruitless search for a dress to wear. One of her friends took her to the Bridgewater Common (a mall north of here), but she didn't find anything she liked there. So this morning I drove her to Oxford Valley Mall, in Pennsylvania.

The twins always enjoy a trip to the mall. Fortunately the things they love best about malls cost virtually nothing. They like riding up and down on the escalators and the glass elevator, looking at the animatronic turtles at Kahunaville (a Polynesian theme restaurant), and throwing pennies into the fountain. I used to take them to malls for exercise last summer when the weather was too hot and humid for walking or playing outside.

Stephanie didn't find a dress she liked at Macys, our first stop. By then it was after 12 and the boys were complaining of hunger so we stopped for lunch. We decided to try Kahunaville. The food was good, but overpriced, I thought. Still, I'm a pushover for theme restaurants. They're hokey, but I love them. Kahunaville is furnished in a tropical style, with servers in Hawaiian print shirts, "rain" falling outside one window, fake vines climbing the walls, waterfalls, and a dancing water show every fifteen minutes.

After lunch, Stephanie tried a few more stores but with no luck. A short and round person, she is hard to fit. We'll try another mall next week.

May has been a month for found bikes. A couple weeks ago when I was dropping Tab off in Princeton, we found a Raleigh mountain bike put out for trash pickup. The bike had a touch of rust and its seat needed to be replaced, but otherwise it was in very good condition. We loaded it into the minivan and took it home. Tab thinks the bike will fit Daniel in a few years.

This afternoon as the twins and I were walking through the alley behind our house, I spotted another mountain bike lying seemingly abandoned. It was unlocked and behind a vacant lot. I think it was probably stolen and hidden by the thief there for future pickup. I wheeled it to the back of our yard but couldn't lift it over our fence (we keep the gate to the alley locked), so I left it propped up against the back of our neighbor's shed. When we returned from our walk I unlocked the back gate, wheeled the bike into our yard, and stored it in our shed. I'll call the police department tomorrow to find out if a bike has been reported stolen.

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