One Foot on a Banana Peel

It’s back to work today following a four-day weekend. At least that means it’s a short week and next week will be even shorter with the Turkey Day break. The only downside to all the days off is greatly reduced paychecks.  The kids in the school district I drive for only have classes 17 days this month.  Other districts have similar schedules.  You wonder where the "wisdom" came from to make November a throw-away month?  The kids haven’t been back long enough to need all that time off yet.  It’d make more sense to have a longer Christmas break or give some kind of break in January and February when everyone has the mid-winter blues.

The weekend was nice, not exciting, but nice.  Friday I met some friends for lunch and a little bit of shopping.  I went without kids but they kept calling me…Matt to tell me all the details of his life and Megan to nag me to buy her something.  We ended the afternoon at Barnes & Noble, where my friends pooped out after just a few minutes.  I stayed on by myself and got to enjoy browsing the books ALL BY MYSELF (how delicious was that?) to my heart’s content.  Sweet!  Any you’ll never believe it, but I didn’t buy a single book.  ‘Course my wish list has grown significantly.

Saturday morning Megan and I slept in a little bit then picked up the side of beef we ordered at the packing house.  They loaded it into the car for us, but we had to carry it into the house and find room in the freezer for all of it.  Megan hates going to the packing house because of the gross-factor, but she was pretty good about it and was a big help putting it in the freezer.  As a reward I took her and her friend, Allie, to Taco Bell for lunch and then to Wal-Mart.  Tim was home by the time we got back….rained out at work.  He had a headache so slept the rest of the afternoon.  When he got up we drove to Greensburg to find him a new pair of workboots, which is always an ordeal.  He is as picky about workboots as teenage girls are about prom dresses.  Given the choice, I’d rather have a root canal than go with him to shop for boots.  Anyway, one of the places we looked this time was a leather shop someone suggested.  Tim didn’t find anything he wanted, but I’ll be going back next payday to pick up the gorgeous pair of cowboy boots Megan tried on and wants for Christmas.  We called for a pizza and picked it up on the way home.

Tim worked on getting more of the trim up in the livingroom on Sunday.  Megan and I worked on the mountain of laundry she pulled out of the nooks and crannies of her room and delivered about 100 Avon brochures.  One of the brochures went to a woman who used to be a good friend and still is Megan’s pediatrician.  She is from the church we left last year and while we still talk now and then, the friendship is really strained because of all that happened among the leadership (which we were part of) and because while I don’t mind seeing the people now and then, Tim wants absolutely nothing to do with them.  It’s hard because there was a core group of us whose families were so close we were like family to each other and now we’ve lost that.  Oy, I need to swerve away from that train of thought.  Church politics can really get me started.  Soooo…..the "sort-of" friend invited us in to see her new house (it’s gorgeous) and talk a little.  It wasn’t too bad till she started asking about Tim and where we are with going to church.  I beat a hasty retreat at that point.  Tim wanted steak for supper so I broiled a couple of t-bones from the meat we got on Saturday and baked some potatoes.  Mmmm-mmm!

Yesterday I didn’t do squat.  I read a book, played on the computer and just enjoyed myself except for a load or two of laundry and making supper.