Friday, May 14, 2004

The thrills of my life

I haven't posted much in the past week, so I wanted to try and give a quick recap of what's been going on during the past few days.

Tuesday: Misty had been nagging reminding me for a couple weeks to attach some hooks on the back porch so she could hang her potted plants, wind chimes, and giant rusty beetle-looking thing. I got that done early in the morning, and Misty declared that the porch project is finally finished. Of course, next week she'll have something else planned, but it looks great out there now.

After hanging up the plants, I set about digging holes in the yard so she could plant even more stuff. My first attempted hole was nearly impossible to dig, as the ground was solid rock about four inches down. Nevertheless, Misty insisted on planting someting there. She tried to convince me that the shovel I was using wasn't good enough, but I knew very well that nothing short of a jackhammer was going to get through that rock (my next-door neighbor had the same problem last year, and he showed me his pick axe that had been bent 90°). The next hole was much easier to make. I dug down more than a foot before I started reaching rock. Then, of course, Misty told me that she'd only needed about a six-inch hole. My third hole fell somewhere in between the first two. It was full of rocks, but at least it wasn't solid rock. I was able to dig around them.

Having earned a break, I watched "Love Actually" with Emily. She was fairly quiet during the movie. I only had to stop and walk around with her a couple of times. The movie was cute — just the sort of romantic fluff that I enjoy.

Wednesday: I got up early in an attempt to get some chores done before Emily had a chance to cause any distractions. Unfortunately, Misty had the same idea, so she handed the baby off to me while she went outside for more planting. I headed to the post office with Emily, who was none too happy to be in the car.

Next on the agenda was Wal-Mart, so I could finally get some digital pictures printed and sent to my family like I've been promising them for seven weeks now. Between the post office and Wal-Mart, Emily was surprisingly quiet, but a couple minutes into the gargantuan retail paradise, she started fussing. I tried to juggle the photo printing machine and swinging the baby in her car seat, but after about 15 minutes, it was too much to concentrate. I went home frustrated.

Early in the afternoon, Misty and I got back in the car for a trip up to Cullman. On the way, we stopped by Wal-Mart again. My theory was: With Misty to keep the baby occupied, I could take care of printing the photos. After 15 minutes of selecting the pictures and quanties I wanted (I had a disk of 200 photos) the woman at the photo counter came over and said, "Y'all aren't tryin' to print pictures, are you?" (No, we're trying to buy potato chips. Why won't this damned snack machine work?!) She continued, "because that machine's out of paper." I wanted to punch her. She'd let me stand there for 15 minutes with a crying baby twice that day, and was only now informing me that the machine wasn't working. To hell with Wal-Mart.

The trip to Cullman was enjoyable. By that, I mean that actually being in Cullman and visiting with Misty's relatives was enjoyable. The actual trip was a test of our patience and the limits of our eardrums. The ride home was the same, only this time we got the added bonus of driving through a thunderstorm.

When we got home, I found an envelope in the mailbox from Haven with the last of their payments. Hallelujah! It was only seven months late.

Thursday: I had a good day at work. My editor suggested I put together a summer movie guide, so I spent all day working on that. It was a fun project.

When I got home I tried to watch "Solaris," which I'd checked out from the library, but Emily had other ideas. She screamed enough to make me cut it off after about 40 minutes, but the movie was terribly boring anyway.

Kind of like this post.

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