Category: Daily Life

I left the office a little after 4 o’clock on Friday and headed home to prepare for the arrival of The Princess, my four-year-old niece. I don’t know if she still refers to herself as The Princess, but she is reported to have done so at least once, so that’s good enough for a blog ID.

My husband went to have coffee with a friend, so The Princess and I headed to the park to play on the huge slides, et. al. Luckily for me, there were lots of other kids there, so The Princess ran around with them, issuing orders (“I want to be the leader!” “Let’s climb up the rock wall!” “You climb up this side of the alligator and I’ll climb up that side.”) and generally having a delightful time. I orbited the playground one bench at a time, getting chigger bites and occasionally chatting briefly with one of the mothers. Finally, The Princess tired of the park when most of the other kids went home, so we rejoined my husband and headed out for pizza and, in the Princess’ case, very sugary tropical punch.

After dinner, I installed The Princess in our bedroom with a DVD of “Shrek” while we watched “Stuck On You” in the living room. Once the movies ended, The Princess had me help her put on her nightgown and she insisted that I put on a nightgown, too. The only one I could find had scratchy lace all across the top, so I waited until The Princess went to sleep and changed back into my usual sleepwear: a t-shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts.

After The Princess went home the next day, my husband and I went out to breakfast at lunchtime, then ended up buying a new set of patio furniture. We had to go back home and get a different vehicle to pick up the furniture, so it was late afternoon before I got it all unpacked, put the tables together, and picked up all the boxes and packing material. We didn’t have a chance to enjoy the new furniture then because it began raining before I finished with the table and I was forced to finish the job cowering on the section of our deck that’s sheltered by a porch.

After all that, a little lie-down seemed in order, and I ended up taking a three-hour nap. I woke up feeling seriously cranky, had a quick buffet dinner at a restaurant, and went back to bed within a couple of hours of returning home. All told, I think I slept 12-13 hours between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Sunday was more activity-packed, but I was rested and energetic. I got a good start on a late newsletter that I should be able to finish tonight, and I volunteered at a silent auction for charity and got to play a rousing internal game of “spot the facelift” and “spot the hair plugs” (it wasn’t too difficult). I must not do a lot of smiling in my daily life, because my face hurt from two hours of smiling at the bidders as they perused my table of purses.

This week is going to be typically busy, but if I can stay focused I’ll be okay. Time to spend an hour surfing the net… No! Time to pack an order for my dad’s company, inventory his textbooks and then go to the office. This focus thing is hard!

Yesterday turned out to be unexpectedly Elvis-oriented.

The hubby and I are planning a trip to Las Vegas for our 10th wedding anniversary in December. We got married in Vegas originally, but I wasn’t willing to do anything too wacky for our wedding the first time around. This time, however, we’re planning to renew our wedding vows with an Elvis minister. I intend to wear a red-sequined cocktail dress, but I’m willing to consider sequined cocktails dresses in other colors, too. I have not yet chosen an Elvis, but I’ll go online and get one reserved pretty soon.

Yesterday, at the prompting of one of my friends, I finally got in touch with a travel agent to begin making the trip plans. We’re opening this trip and vow renewal ceremony to pretty much everyone we know. I will make no attempt to coordinate anyone else’s travel plans or other activities, but if someone wants to be in Las Vegas that weekend and come to see us affirm that the original wedding had been a good idea, they’re welcome to be there. Hmmm, maybe I’ll start a separate “Vegas Trip” blog for everyone who’d like to go.

The second Elvis sighting of the day came from renting and watching the DVD of Bubba Ho-Tep. The movie is a horror/comedy/drama about “what really became of Elvis,” which involves him battling an ancient mummy to save the souls of all his fellow nursing home residents. Sure, it’s a low-budget movie, but it was one where you could tell that every penny was well spent. Plus, it stars Bruce Campbell – always a huge bonus in my book. If you like the horror/comedy genre with a bit of poignancy thrown in for good measure, I’d recommend the movie. It takes a while to get moving at first, though, so you have to be patient.

Uh, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve started to pay more attention to those moments when, just for a second, you think you see one thing but it turns out to be something else. For example, this weekend I was driving down the highway and a crane or heron flew up from the median. For a split-second, I thought, “Is that a pterodactyl?” Then my mind finished processing the sight and I realized what it really was. Until the processors kick in all the way, though, apparently anything goes.

I was going to title this post “Average Jane, Master Baker,” but even I know when to resist a bad joke. Wait a minute – I still mentioned it, so I guess I can’t resist after all.

Anyway, tonight I’m going to hang out with a group of women who call themselves the Regular Girls. They (we) meet semi-regularly on Wednesday nights to eat dinner, drink wine and chat. This week’s hostess assigned me the role of dessert-bringer, so I made a chocolate cake roll with vanilla ice cream in the center. I also trashed my kitchen in the process, and I’m trying to remedy that this morning before I move on to the next baking project. The cake roll came out beautifully when I took it out of the pan and rolled it to cool. When I added the ice cream and re-rolled it, the cake developed huge, horizonal rifts – d’oh! The good news is that they’ll be less noticeable once the cake has spent 18+ hours wrapped in foil in the freezer. They’ll be even less noticeable when the cake is cut into neat slices, garnished with fresh raspberries, and served to people who’ve already had a couple of glasses of wine.

This morning I’m going to bake a batch of the world’s most delicious blueberry scones. If you like blueberry scones at all, I recommend you try this recipe. Brush the tops with water or egg white and sprinkle them with raw sugar before baking to make them even tastier. You’ll be sorry you ever forked out $2.00 to Starbucks for one of their big ol’ stale scones.

We have new neighbors moving in next door, so my plan is to bring them some scones and take the rest to work. If I’m going to accomplish that and still get to work early, I suppose I’d best get moving. Isn’t it wonderful that it’s Wednesday already?! Man, I love three-day weekends…

Monday was the perfect kickoff for summer – a dress rehearsal for every warm-weather activity that’s bound to follow.

I started the day with an early-morning trip to the grocery store for picnic supplies. After I thoroughly scrubbed out the cooler (it was disgusting after a winter in the basement), I packed it with ice, soft drinks, Guinness pub draft cans, deli meat and cheese, grapes and carrot sticks. Then I stuffed a grocery sack with bread, potato chips, peanuts, sunscreen, beach towels, and my cell phone.

Two other couples met us at our house around 10:30 a.m. and we drove to a lake about 45 minutes away. There we rented a pontoon boat, loaded all our various coolers, bags and boxes (we could have survived on a desert island for a month with the stuff we all brought) and headed out on the water. The weather was nice, but not quite summery – about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and windy. I slathered myself with heavy-duty sunscreen because I am far too pale to entertain any notions of tanning. I wore a summer top, some nylon swim shorts and a pair of sandals. Fortunately, I also brought a cotton blouse which came in handy for warmth, especially early on. My husband wore a polo shirt and jeans because he is not a boat person. He never learned how to swim, and I realized that this was the first time we’d ever been on a boat together.

We began with a brief cruise around the lake. The water was rather choppy, so we could not escape a certain amount of water splashing into the boat. We dropped anchor in a cove and everyone fixed sandwiches and ate fried chicken. As we ate and chatted, we kept an eye on two separate banks of clouds that were looming on the other side of the lake. We couldn’t tell how far away the clouds were, but they were obviously producing rain. After everyone finished eating we decided to see more of the lake. By then, the wind had picked up and the waves in the lake were getting bigger and bigger. All forward movement caused huge water splashes to douse the passengers, and I wrapped myself in my beach towel to stay as warm and dry as possible. After a few bathroom stops (there were quite a few restrooms dotted around the lakeshore) and additional lake cruises, we noticed that one of the storms was getting nearer, so we began to try to move away.

One storm passed us by completely, but we weren’t so lucky with the second one. The wind picked up and we struggled to get the canvas top raised over the boat so we wouldn’t get soaked when the rain began. We made our way under a bridge and tied the boat to a rope that was hanging down from above. That’s when the storm hit. All six of us dove under our beach towels as hard rain started to pummel the boat. I looked up and saw eight or ten boats and Sea-Doos making a beeline for the shelter of the bridge. That’s when the rope broke. In the midst of the pounding rain, we began to drift swiftly toward a huge, concrete bridge pillar. Our “captain” ducked out from under his beach towel to start the engine and keep us from being rammed into the bridge. Then, just like that, the storm ended.

As soon as the storm passed, the sun came out, the temperature rose about 10 degrees, and it turned into a gorgeous summer day. By then the rental term for the boat was almost over, but we had time to dry our clothes and hair and enjoy a bit of solar warmth. I think I got a little sunburn on my legs and a few bug bites, but otherwise I made it through the day unscathed. As we drove back home, it was tempting to take a nap in the van. I succumbed to the temptation once we got home, and slept for three hours. This wasn’t the productive weekend I’d planned for, but I think it was worth it.

I can already tell that it’s going to be very hard to get back into my routine when I go back to work on Tuesday. Last night we went to a late showing of “Kill Bill 2” and stayed up until after 1:00 a.m. (admittedly the two-hour nap we took that afternoon facilitated things). I went to parties on Friday and Saturday nights and still got up relatively early the next day in both instances.

This morning I need to go to the grocery store to get picnic foods for a boat trip with some friends. I could have slept considerably later, but a mylar balloon made its way from the opposite end of the house and wound up caught in the gravitational pull of the living room ceiling fan. I woke to a loud, “thwack, thwack, thwack” sound as the fan blades pummelled the balloon repeatedly. After I retrieved the balloon and put it out of our misery with a steak knife, I tried to go back to sleep, only to be pestered incessantly by the cats. After the third set of furry legs grazed my face, I decided to just get up.

I’m very torn today about going on an afternoon leisure trip because I have tons of work to do. It is imperative that I begin easing out of the majority of my volunteer newsletter commitments as soon as possible. I took them on when I was self-employed (read: underemployed), but now I simply do not have the time for them. Every time I try to do something fun or just laze about when I’m not working, it makes me feel guilty. I want my free time back!

I met a group of friends from my last job for happy hour last night. We gathered at a popular Mexican restaurant that is in a well-known flood plain, just as the skies opened and poured buckets of rain. Fortunately the storm was brief and we were able to enjoy our margaritas and tacos without floating away on our barstools.

Tonight my husband is going out of town, so I’ve accepted another invitation to sit around and drink margaritas with a different group of friends. Saturday night I’m going to my sister’s for a cookout with her friends. Sunday night, my husband is back and we’re going to a high school graduation party for one of our car club buddies. I haven’t heard any final word on our Memorial Day plans, but they once included renting a pontoon boat and floating around a lake with yet another set of friends.

Then there’s all the work I need to do over the weekend. Sometimes I wish I could take on an intern. I could give him/her wonderful experience in newsletter creation, website updating, general office work, etc. Maybe it would be easier if I just stopped volunteering for stuff.

Even though Monday is a holiday, I’ll still post a new blog entry. (I’m close to my 100th post and I wouldn’t want to slow down my journey to that milestone.) By then, perhaps I’ll have something to share that’s actually interesting. Keep your fingers crossed!

Last night my husband and I attended a Neighborhood Watch meeting in the gymnasium of a nearby elementary school. We live in a town with about 10,000 residents that’s a suburb of city with a population of about 440,000. Our town has a very low crime rate, but we figured it would be nice to see our Neighborhood Watch program get rolling again. It was fairly active when we moved in 9 years ago, but it has dwindled away since then.

We arrived at the meeting a few minutes early, and we were the only ones there except for four police officers. Eventually four elderly people from the neighborhood near the school arrived. That was it. Out of the 130 fliers the police department distributed, six people showed up.

We ended up having a lot of time to just chat with the police officers, which was kind of nice. We all agreed that one of the biggest problems in our neighborhood is speeders and people running stop signs. One of the officers had once pulled me over for an illegal right turn at a red light, and I hoped she didn’t remember that.

My husband and I have pretty much agreed that we’re staying in this house indefinitely, unless the neighborhood declines. It’s time we acted like permanent residents and made an effort to get to know more people on our street. I’m finally going to register our alarm system with the police department, although I draw the line at licensing the indoor cats. The fact that we have twice as many cats as the city allows is a factor as well.

Sorry this is so deadly boring today. I’m behind on sleep, I’m stiff and sore all over from too much computer time and not enough exercise, and I have so much work to do that I can’t think straight. I’ll make an effort to be more entertaining tomorrow.

Just for the sake of continuity, I thought I’d wrap up a few loose topics from the last week or so that I’d never brought up again.

• The Amazing Puking Cat – I took Chunky to the vet on Saturday morning (not before she managed to yakk on the bed one last time) and, to make a long story short, they gave her an anti-nausea injection and sent me home with a bag of special dry food that’s supposed to be easy to digest. It occurred to me that this would mean feeding all four cats separately. My inner pragmatist took over and I filled the cats’ self-feeder with the special food so everyone could eat it. That was the end of Feline Hurlfest 2004.
• The Stupendously Expensive Car Repair – No word yet, although it must be getting close to completion. Last week the emergency backup car stranded me a couple of blocks from work and had to be towed to the shop, too. I didn’t bring it up at the time because it made my intra-cranial pressure increase to think about it. It turned out to be a relatively minor problem and the tow cost as much as the repair. D’oh!
• The Weekend Road Rally Adventure – I drove someone else’s Porsche Cayenne in a rally the Saturday before last. It was a blast! We didn’t make the top three, but my navigator (the car’s owner) and I had a delightful two-hour run and a lot of laughs.

Finally, here’s something new: the Average Jane Boutique. People seem to like my scribbly alter ego, so I’ve set up a CafePress shop with a few t-shirts and other miscellaneous products featuring Jane. My reasoning on matching designs to products: the girly stuff mostly says “Average Jane” and the manlier stuff says “AverageJane.com.” If you’re just dying to have a particular product with a different variation of the artwork, e-mail me and I’ll make it available. (Oh yeah, I’ve finally added an e-mail address to my profile.)

Tonight we’re going to a Neighborhood Watch meeting, which might provide some interesting column fodder. Have a lovely Wednesday!

Last night we had a big spring storm that caused all of the meteorologists to interrupt the good TV repeatedly throughout the evening to explain how and when the weather might kill us. I’m conditioned by a childhood in the boondocks to start grabbing big armloads of cats and heading down to the basement the second the tornado sirens go off. My husband is stubbornly convinced that tornadoes never hit “in the city” and is destined to someday be a storm-watching casualty statistic.

Unfortunately, the tornado sirens began as we were on our way out to get sandwiches for dinner. The employees at Subway were, as my mother would have said, as nervous as a pregnant fox in a forest fire. It seemed cruel to eat our food there when they clearly wanted to close the restaurant early, so we took it home, ate in front of the TV and watched the weather report.

By then, the first storm had finished threatening our area with tornadoes and hail, but it was raining hard and there was lots of exciting lightning and thunder. The second GIANT! SCARY! storm headed in around 10:00 p.m. and I did what any reasonable person would do: I went to bed. Aside from one last, incredibly noisy lightning strike near the house that briefly woke me up, I had a delightful, relaxing sleep. There’s something about a good thunderstorm that always makes me want to curl up with a blanket and pillow and sleep through the whole thing. This can be awkward at the office…