It helps when it appears as though I know what I'm doing. Learning how to feign competence is a very handy skill to have.
Anyway, I had enough done to be satisfactory, and I'm at that point where I'm waiting for the other guy to give me text and which slides to delete or to move, so the bridge is in his court now. Yep, he's another one of those metaphor mixers. He said something in passing about "waxing elegant." I suppose it beats waxing elephants, but I digress.
THE WEEKEND! Started Friday by swinging by the junkyard place. I'm beginning to like it a lot there--I wonder if they would mind if I set up a little tent in the corner? Anyway, as I mentioned over on the other blog, one of the things that has annoyed me has been a slight misalignment between the fenders and the hood. It (the hood) sits down a bit too low, and I see it whenever I drive and it has begun to grate on me. Moreso when I saw that the little spiral-grooved rubber thumbtips (just like on the trunklid) that hold the hood at the proper gap were smushed to smithereens. They had been let all the way out, and were crushed beyond all usefulness, which is much like working for the government. ANYway, I wanted to see about stea--finding some of those to make the hood all nice and level again.
And, there's that whole thing about the hubcaps I mentioned. As you recall, when I got my öld skül style hubcaps, I had gotten some extras so I could choose the bestest ones. The discards I discarded in the trunk of a white 242 there on the end of a row, but ever since then, I have worried incessantly about the possibility of some miscreant making off with my precious "V"-centers or otherwise losing them. I really needed some spares, you know. Just in case.
Just in case I forget what a moron I am.
Got to the yard in my spiffy clothes, got my hand stamped and walked on out. In an odd coincidence, I thought it would be neat to show you some pictures of the place, and at the very moment I thought it, I saw a big sign "NO PHOTOGRAPHS." Junk is a highly sensitive subject, you know.
Found the Pining for the Fjords section of Volvos and started unscrewing likely bits of rubber from under several hoods. Wound up with four sets of rubbery things, and THEN found something else I've been wanting--some rear headrests. In blue. In good shape. If only I'd brought my tools with me! Another excuse to return, I suppose.
Wound my way back around to the repository bin for my hubcaps and thankfully, they were all still there. Someone got two of the trim rings, though, but at least the important pieces were still where I'd left them. Hooray!
Back to the counter, paid my six dollars and my thirty-four cents, and set out for home.
HOME, where Reba had some supper cooking, and had decided to take Rebecca shopping for her back to school stuff. And then for some reason, after supper, she started going through their supply lists and grabbing stuff out of the pantry. Why? I don't know. She'll do that sometimes--say she's going to do something, then get sidetracked onto something else, and wind up not doing what she was supposed to.
We spread out the various used notebooks, pencils, crayons, paper, cards, pens, highlighters, folders, binders, scissors, rulers, erasers, glue, plutonium (not really) and other junk we had left over. Another thing she tends to do is go buy new things when we have things that are still new, but not "new from the store new." I figure if they've only written in three sheets of a notebook, they can use it again with no problem. Aside from the obvious one of a certain child who puts much more stock in external appearances than is necessary.
Anyway, we categorized and sorted for a while until it became obvious that Miss Reba was going to keep doing it until all the stores closed if I didn't make her leave, so after several subtle then overt efforts to get her to get Rebecca and leave (the final one being "Get Rebecca and y'all leave NOW or else the stores are going to be closed and she won't get anything and she'll be mopey for days and so go on NOW and I will do this stuff") she finally went out the door with Middle Girl in tow for their girls' night out.
Me? Well, I started a load of laundry then went back to trying to reassemble items from the various piles to satisfy the various supply lists for each child and each child's teacher. It was almost like playing Twister--Blue folder with brads! Yellow highlighter! Green pen! There! HERE! Ughhg--over around over there by the shelf--nope--that's not it--ON THE COUNTER! It sounds very fun and relaxing. It wasn't. By the time they got back home, I had most of the items put together (with a few additional ones placed on the shopping list) but the time spent sitting on the hard kitchen floor and all the hopping up and down to get things, combined with various laundry basket toting had conspired to make my butt very, very sore, and the rest of me very, very tired.
BUT, Rebecca found some cute clothes, so I suppose that was okay. Next up would be Catherine, but she'd have to wait until Saturday.
And as we all remember--Saturday was Dog Daze! And I have been really wishing I could call it Dog Daze Afternoon, but it was in the morning when I took Oldest over there, and there was no Al Pacino to be found anywhere.
More about that in a bit--it's LUNCHTIME, you know!
Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 8, 2005 12:24 PM