Exceedingly Mundane

Just a quick note about our day. We met Tim’s parents, brother Terry and my dad this morning at Harbor Freight. Tim, Terry and Linda and Mitchell bought a bunch of toys there. We all went to eat (and ate WAY too much food) at Ryan’s for lunch. Note to self – Stay away from all-you-can-eat buffets. ACK! Daddy left going to Indianola, and we went shopping for the rest of the afternoon at Lowe’s and Walmart with Tim’s folks and brother. Stopped for gas (going up, up, up here) and then a movie on the way home. By the time we got in, Tim was completely wiped out. Has taken some Tylenol, as he says his fever is back, and has been laying on the couch since we got home.

We had a message on the answering machine from Kathryn, saying that they were on their way to MS from Charlotte, for David’s baptism tomorrow. We had already wanted to go, as Dad went up, and David and Eliz were home from MC, but Tim is feeling so bad, he had already said he would not be able to make the trip. With Kathryn and Jeremy coming home, it makes it so much harder not to be able to go. We hate not being able to see everyone and being there for David. I hope everyone understands that we’d come if we could. But with the way Tim is feeling, and that this is his one chance to get a bit of rest before his week from you-know-where starts at work (well, 2-3 weeks he says this project is going to take), we just can’t make it. Tim is not getting better, and if he doesn’t get some rest soon, he’s going to get a lot worse. He hides it well, some people might not even realize he’s sick, because he’s tough, but I know better and I see a lot more than other people do. Anyway, I digress. We hate not being able to go, but we’re not going to be able to make it. I hate not being able to see everyone, and not seeing David be baptized.

Well, I stayed pretty busy today and didn’t get this done earlier. If you’d like to play along, just post your own answers in a comment! 🙂

From this website.

Appetizer – Who is the one person you email more often than anyone else? Probably Gail.

Soup – So far, which year of your life has been the most enjoyable? Well, I would have to say 1995, the year that Tim and I dated and got engaged.

Salad – Name someone with whom you have lost touch but would like to reunite. Probably either Julie or Kate.

Main Course – What was the tastiest meal you had this past week? Hmm, the tastiest one I prepared was my beefy black bean chili with homemade butter wheat bread. Overall, it would be our dinner out tonight, I had shrimp quesadillas and they were delicious!

Dessert – Using the letters in your favorite color, write three words that describe your personality.

G-R-E-E-N
G – Gullible
R – Routinized (Routine-Oriented)
E – Envious
E – Entertaining
N – Naive

Well, we went shopping and out to eat dinner tonight. Tim is still not feeling well (and voluntarily taking Tylenol, so I know he feels bad), and was pretty wiped out by the time we finally got home. I, however, had a really good time!

We went to the new Lowe’s out on Lakeland. Very nice store. Big, too. I think it’s bigger than the one in Hattiesburg, and I can only hope that ours here in Madison that they are building will be that big, or bigger. We found lots of things in there we liked! Including a wallpaper border for our bathroom. We both liked it a lot better than the one we had bought at Home Depot a couple of weekends ago. We shopped at Lowe’s a little while, and then we went to eat Mexican at El Torero at Parkway. Very good place, we used to eat there a lot more before we got our 2 Mexican places in Madison. Tim had his usual (carne asada) and I tried the shrimp quesadillas, which were delicious. After we ate, we went to the new Kohl’s. I like this store! I had never been in one and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I can see myself spending a lot of money in there! I didn’t get a chance to look through the clothes much, so I’m planning on going back next week or the next and doing more shopping. We mostly concentrated on the home interior stuff, and bought a new shower curtain and towels to go with the new border. Between what we bought tonight, and what I had bought a week or so ago at Linens N Things, I think we have what we want now for our bathroom. We still have to take down the old border and put up this new border, and of course, I have things to return to 3 or 4 stores, but I think we’re “good to go” now. 🙂

Poor Tim, he is still not feeling well and is really wiped out. I hope he gets to feeling better soon. No rest for the weary though. Both his parents (Linda and Mitchell) and my dad (Fred) are all coming tomorrow. We’re going to meet them early, out at Harbor Freight, in Pearl. Like I told Tim, going to Harbor Freight ranks right up there with a trip to the dentist for a root canal, or a trip to the gynecologist, for me. Oh joy, I can hardly wait! 🙂

Goodnight computer. Goodnight Internet. Goodnight Hambones.

I had IM’d with Tim earlier this afternoon and told him it was a pretty day, he had been working a lot late at night, and could he take off a bit early and play hooky? He said he was busy working on stuff, but he was going to try.

He just got home – a WHOLE hour early! Yippppeeeee!

I just got back from Walmart, and now we’re headed out to Lakeland to check out the new Kohl’s, the new Lowe’s and go eat supper out there somewhere. Can’t wait! 😀

Well, it was another long night. Poor Tim. He’s half sick and is on-call and keeps getting called out in the middle of the night. I honestly don’t know how he does it. He is in the middle of a deep sleep at 3 in the morning, the on-call phone rings, he jumps up and starts working. His throat was so sore, he could barely talk. Poor thing. We slept in, needless to say, this morning so he could get a little more sleep before heading into work.

As the old story goes, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that technically he goes off-call today, for another two weeks. However, he told me this morning that his boss has guard duty this weekend, so Tim would more than likely get called anyway. Plus, he’s been warning me for weeks that they have been in sort of a “code-freeze”. They haven’t been putting in much new code on Tuesday nights at 11 PM since the holidays. Now, it seems, they are going to put in a whole bunch at one time. Tim said that starting next week, he would be working almost every single night, starting about 11 PM or so, to put in new code. I said, is it just for a few days? No, he said, it’s going to take at least a couple of weeks, maybe more. Poor thing, he is not going to keep a normal schedule for a while longer yet.

So – the moral of the story here is, for those of you reading this who might be tempted to call early in the morning any time soon… Please Don’t. Call after lunch! We’d both really appreciate it!

Click Here to go take it for yourself and see what gender your brain is! 🙂

If you could open your own retail store, what type of merchandise would you sell?

From one of my most favorite meme sites – Thursday Threesome Meme

::Routine Scheduled Maintenance::

Onesome: Routine– Tell us about your morning routine. Do you get up at the same time every day, or do you sometimes hit the snooze button on your alarm clock more often than you should? Do you head straight for the coffee or into the shower? Well, I think this meme applies to people who have a job! 🙂 Like most of the rest of the world. I set the alarm for Tim, but we end up snoozing a couple of times. He heads right for the shower, I get up and fix his lunch, get his clothes out, and get going on my morning routine. I have a very specific routine I follow. It works for me. Certain things every day, certain things on certain days of the week. As Suzie said years ago (and I think she made up this word), I’m very “routinized”.

Twosome: Scheduled– What’s on your schedule for the day? Do you schedule every minute or go with the flow? I schedule most everything in my life. I have things I do each day, like the trivia in the morning, that I do at a specific time. I have lists all over the place – in my head, on my computer, on the refrigerator, on little scraps of paper lying around. The nice thing now is that most of the time, if I don’t get something done, it can wait till the next day. Not all of them, but some of them can slide. The luxury I have now. But, again, this meme is perfect for me, because I’m very structured, very ordered, very routine oriented. A bit OCD, Tim would say 😀

Threesome: Maintenance– What do you do to maintain your sanity each day in this hectic world? Do you find a little time to yourself each day and meditate, or wait until everyone’s tucked in for the night and log on to the computer or settle down with a book? Or do you run off to the gym and maintain your body while maintaining your mind? Well, again, a question for the person I used to be. I have done everything in my power to live a more stress-free life, to take care of my health, physically and mentally, and to take care of Tim in the process. I have a much different set of rules for myself now than I did when I was working full time. And I feel about a thousand times better too.

Well, Tim doesn’t need to “work from home” on a regular basis. He didn’t go in to work yesterday because he was feeling bad, so he “worked from home”. Last night at 8:45, I asked him how much longer he was going to work, and he said “I’m almost finished”. Good grief. At least when he goes into the office, he finishes up between 5 and 6 PM. Working from home, apparently to a Type-A personality, means working till you go to sleep. 👿

I swear it did, I didn’t even see it in my cart, and then it was time to check out. And there was a line. And I couldn’t just give up my space in line to go put it back. Wherever it came from. I’m not even sure what part of Sam’s would even have something like this. I swear.

P.S. Plus, it’s such a practical thing, it can’t be called a splurge or even a happy. A happy is a Sonic shake, Godiva or Ghiradelli chocolates, a DVD, a CD, Bath & Body Works stuff, things like that. Certainly not household storage items.

OK, here’s some thought-provoking, utterly profound (yes, dripping with sarcasm here!), questions for the day. Enjoy!

What is the name of your imaginary friend? I don’t remember having an imaginary friend as a child. In fact, as previously stated, I remember absolutely nothing about my children, except a stray memory here and there. Completely pathetic.

Without peeking, what is under your bed? Two rubbermaid under-the-bed containers and possibly one of Tim’s guns. Would have to look to be sure.

When is the last time you were on stage? Hmmm, how about when I graduated from college and strolled up there to receive my diploma!

What is your favourite shade of red? Burgundy

How many tea parties do you attend a month? None. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a tea party. I did, however, have a cup of herbal tea last night while watching Amazing Race, does that count? 🙂

Well, Tim is home sick today. That happens even less frequently than a blue moon. I can remember maybe one other time in the last 8 years or so that Tim has stayed home from work sick. Poor baby. He says he feels better now (3:30 PM) than he did this morning, so that’s a good sign. I hope he doesn’t have or get this crud that is going around. Gail and Don have had it, and Tim says just about everybody at work has had it. I don’t want it. Please, go away and do not visit our home.

Been busy today. Went and got my hair cut, then ran some errands. I went to Michaels with my obligatory coupon but couldn’t find a single thing that I wanted to spend money on. Gee, I sure wish we would get another craft chain store (oh, Hobby Lobby, oh Joann’s, oh AC Moore, where are you??). It would be so great if one would open up somewhere, like maybe out Lakeland Drive, where everything else is opening up. I saw in the paper yesterday that the new Kohl’s had opened early. Gotta go check that store and the new Lowe’s, which also opened yesterday, out this weekend. Maybe Friday night, if not then, then either Saturday or Sunday.

I digress. I do that a lot!

I also made a big run to Sam’s. Spent tons of money. Got large copious amounts of just a few things. Renewed our membership for another year. 35 bucks, cha-ching. Stopped and picked up Sonic for Tim on the way home for lunch. I was trying so hard to be good. I wanted a burger or chicken sandwich. With Fries. Or Tots. Or Onion Rings. And a cherry limeade. I was good and got a salad. That’s it. Argh, it was just OKAY.

Need to run more errands, but decided to save them for another day. So, I’m catching up on the trivia on hambones, emails, blog surfing, point earning, and various household chores (laundry, dishwasher, cleaning up), etc, for the remainder of the afternoon. We will have a nice dinner and then settle in to watch Lost and Alias. I can’t wait! We’ll have to tape the Idol results show. It always comes in second to Lost.

Well, I haven’t blogged much personal the last day or two because nothing has really been going on. Just staying home, doing the wifely thing and all. But, now I have something mildly irritating to report.

I think I smell a rat.

Or more precisely, Tim discovered a rat tonight. ARGH. We’ve been through this before, for those of you who don’t know. A year or two ago, we had a huge one (maybe more) that was apparently living in our attic. One of them died and we suddenly smelled a stench in a certain part of the house, where he was dead right above in the attic. Anyway, Tim was convinced they were getting into the attic via the chimeny, and its rotting masonite-type facing. I *thought* we had fixed that problem last year when we had vinyl siding put on the house. Tim assured me then that we shouldn’t have rats in the attic any more. And that’s not where he found one, so he was probably right on target with that. He found one, where believe it or not, he has found one before, before the attic incident. Living in our gas grill.

ICK!

They apparently like to nest in our grill in the winter, we had this problem a couple of years ago. The things were trying to build a nest in the base, under the burner, and Tim found it, put out a bunch of rat poison and we haven’t had that problem since. Until tonight. Tim went to grill out some chicken for us, and found a nest in the grill again. Actually, he said he saw the rat, said he was big and fat. HMMPH. I bet, feasting off no telling what around here. He had built a nest out of the expensive landscape fabric we used when we built the deck. We bought a roll of that stuff to cover the edges of the patio, where grass was growing, and where we were building the deck on top of, because we knew that since grass had been there for years, it would probably continue to grow and come up through the deck. So we put a bunch of black landscape fabric out. Tim found a huge wad of it, ripped to shreds, in the bottom of the grill. A nice warm nest. What’s worse, is that last summer I got him a really nice, heavy duty, thick grill cover for his grill. The darn rat chewed several holes in the grill cover to get in and out of the grill to his nest. ARGH. I do hate critters. If its not snakes I’m worried about, then there are frogs jumping around, big black birds in my bird feeders, black cats crawling all over my deck, fence and yard, and now rats all over the place. Heaven help me, why are there so many critters in suburbia? Please, make them go away!

OK, here’s the question of the day:

Do you sing in your car (or house or wherever) when you’re alone?

Remember to post your answer in a comment, if you want to play along 😀

At this very moment…

1. Are you craving anything and if so, what? Not at the moment. However, if I crave anything, it’s chocolate.

2. What is the weather outside, and do you wish it would change? Sunny, chilly. Looks a bit windy. Haven’t been out.

3. What two websites do you think you will go to next after you are finished here? Blog-surfing and a scrapbooking site, more than likely.

4. Do you wish you were somewhere else and if so, where? With Tim.

5. Do you wish you were someone else, and if so, who? Somebody’s mother. 🙁