My plans this Labor Day weekend, barring a Saturday shift at the library, were simple:
Clean my closet, organize some books for donation, crank out 1200 words on my WIP, finish gamma reading* a friend’s amazing novel, pedal nine to fifteen more miles on my exercise bike, and take naps.
A lot of naps.
Instead, I went with my family to an ill-fated baseball game,** successfully added dark purple highlights to Jane’s hair (and my thumbs), made daily visits to the brand new self-serve frozen yogurt place,*** finished reading and giving feedback on the friend’s amazing novel, completely failed at putting The Flash’s logo on Sunny’s tiny thumbs with nail polish pens, went swimsuit shopping, had a family grocery outing, water-sealed Janie’s new boots, thoroughly enjoyed my husband’s experiment with oatmeal pie,^ and laughed.
A lot of laughing.^^
Under the circumstances, one out of five is pretty good.
Except for the lack of naps, because now I’m all tuckered out, just in time for work.
I also appear to have a small, phlegm-colored hedgehog lodged in my throat and an icepick-wielding gnome prodding me behind one eye, but I’m a big believer in the curative properties of coffee and ignoring viruses until they go away or step it up.
Totally worth it.
How was your weekend?
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* Like beta reading, except a little later in the process.
** It was the second game of a double-header, and by the time we arrived, they’d run out of box seats for the voucher-holders, so we were given bleacher seats. This would ahve been fine, except none of the seven hundred bleacher fans for the previous game left, so there were no seats at all, unless we wanted to be separated. We didn’t, so we headed for the grass picnic section, which is a steep hill about a 60° angle from the edge rail of the stadium. Sunny and I arranged ourselves, while my husband and Jane went to get provisions. Five minutes after they left, the heavens opened up, and Sunny and I ran for shelter along the lane of concession stands, along with three thousand other people. My husband and I did the “Stay alive, whatever occurs!” schtick via text and we all finally met up around the condiment stand and joined the flow of steaming humanity making for the exits, trying to keep Sunny from being pulled away by the undertow. We all made it out safe, if dazed and oxygen-deprived, and the womenfolk huddled under an inadequate tree, while my husband ran the quarter-mile back to the car. He picked us up and the whole soggy lot of us went to Wendy’s and had a late night supper in our kitchen. It was, as we all said later, a bad idea an a terrific bonding experience.
*** Where I developed an addiction to those tapioca, fruit syrup-filled boba bubble thingies. The blueberry ones.
^ Like pecan pie, except with oatmeal. Next time, he’s adding a few raisins. And then maybe walnuts, too. Or chocolate chips. We kind of made a list. . .
^^ The one that really got me was on the way to lunch Sunday:
Jane: “What kind of car is that, Mom?”
Me: “I don’t know. It looks like a Fit, maybe? No, it’s a Nissan.”
My husband: “I don’t think Nissan makes panel vans. Looks like they refit a pickup.”
Sunny: “Maybe a truck and a van had a baby!”
Jane: “Cars can’t have babies, Sunny.”
Me: “But it still kind of makes you want to lock different types of cars up in a garage and let nature take its course, doesn’t it?”
My husband, not missing a beat: “Nah. The noise would be terrible.”
Jane and I, in chorus: “BWAHAHAhahahahahhahah! I can’t believe—oh, that’s so WRONG–Dad! Good one, hon! BWAHAHAHahahahhahaha!!!
Sunny, after the cacckling died down: “Why?”
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The Least I Can Do is the amazing and Not Usually Safe For Work brainchild of Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza. I’m not kidding about their ownership rights nor about its NSFWness (Sundays are generally okay to share with kids, but your parental rating system may vary) or its levels of sheer awesome and breathtaking chutzpah.
Earful of Cider 